Tuesday, 31st December 2013

by Joshua Gaskell

Having had no luck so far with Guardian Jobs search results, I decide to change my criteria to:

You need not see what someone is doing
To know if it is his vocation,
You have only to watch his eyes;
A cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon
Making a primary incision,
A clerk completing a bill of lading
Wear the same rapt expression,
Forgetting themselves in a function.

This poem by W. H. Auden is called “Sext”, though it’s more than a hundred and sixty characters, nothing to do with sex, and was published thirty years before the invention of mobile phones.

And sadly, these poetical keywords return no search results at all, which is only a very small improvement on “Advertising sales executive”.